


neon gods

by heartcondition



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Bad Luck, Biting, Complicated Relationships, Developing Relationship, Hong Kong, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Slightly Non-Linear, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-04 11:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartcondition/pseuds/heartcondition
Summary: Soonyoung's got an absolutist need for love—that, and the guilt of wanting it.





	neon gods

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! i wrote for perfect places and then it all ran away from me . . .
> 
> i have some overly long bg info here just incase anything referenced in this fic is unfamiliar...i think most ppl will be fine w/out it but!!! just in case:
> 
>    
> > Fu Lu Shou/Sanxing/Fuk Luk Sau/Three Stars Gods are the gods of Prosperity, Status, and Longevity. The gods themselves + statues of them are popular symbols of luck among those that are into feng shui/fung soui.   
> > I’m assuming most people are relatively familiar with feng shui/fung soui on a surface level, but if you’re not, essentially its a sort of geomancy or system of laws that govern spatial arrangements in relation to the flow of energy to produce either favorable or unfavorable effects. It’s far more complicated then that but!! Basics.  
> > HKAPA = Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts  
> > Dragon gates are a modern manifestation of feng shui/fung soui in a lot of the Hong Kong skyline’s architecture. HK’s geographic location between mountains and the sea is in excellent accordance with feng shui/fung soui principles––legend has it the mountains are home to the dragons that bear powerful positive energy, so the gates are intended to allow dragons to come down from the mountains to the sea and not disrupt their pathway. Aside from dragon gates, feng shui/fung soui masters are often consulted before the construction of a building in HK in order to evaluate it for its property and influence.  
> > The three most common languages spoken in Hong Kong are Cantonese, English, and more recently Mandarin. Since this mix of characters would likely speak a mix of these + Korean, for the sake of clarity I rarely (if ever) identify what language is being spoken at any time, and will not be switching between alternate name spellings for each language. Any honorifics used will be Cantonese.  
> > A Hong Kong Rooftop is a drink you can technically (or officially?) only get at the Ritz Carlton’s 118th floor bar, but suspend disbelief and assume its been recreated in other places for much cheaper.  
> > Rent / real estate in Hong Kong is pretty high and it’s definitely not realistic for even two college-age students to be able to afford a multi-room apartment as well as a long term parking space that isn't provided by their university but. Let’s turn a blind eye together . . .   
> >None of the bars or restaurants actually exist hehe

Junhui opens his arms.

The rest of it happens in just under three seconds; one, Soonyoung drops his stupid fucking bag, two, Junhui says his name, and three, Soonyoung crashes right into him, forgets whatever he’d been thinking of saying for the entire flight over here, and gets lifted precisely four inches off the ground from the force of Junhui’s hug.

“Jun,” Soonyoung says, the sound of it all screwed up through the twist of his smile, his face pressed into into Junhui’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Junhui replies, his laugh right up against the shell of Soonyoung’s ear. He squeezes Soonyoung tighter, plants a chaste kiss to the line where Soonyoung’s temple meets his hair, then sets him back down on his feet. “Good flight? Did they hand out those little crackers I like? Last time I flew they changed the brand again, but it’s nearly been a year…”

“The new ones aren’t as good,” Soonyoung says sagely. He reaches to pick up his bag, but Junhui beats him to it. “Where’s Minghao?”

Junhui shakes out his hair, stepping backwards with Soonyoung’s suitcase towards the exit. “At home,” he says. “He got caught up at his last evaluation and couldn’t make it to my car in time.”

“Your car?”

Junhui glances back over his shoulder, grinning wickedly. “I have a car now. Brand new air freshener and everything!”

An entire eighteen months ago, Soonyoung took this exact route away from the airport alone, wearing one too many layers in the back of a smudgy red taxi; Kap Shui Mun Bridge, Tsing Ma, Tsing Yi, through the dim tunnel that runs beneath Victoria Harbor and back into the city. The sea had been choppy but the air was crystal clear, and Soonyoung stared at the supermassive holes that punched through half the buildings in the city skyline, feeling a little like he was about to be sea sick, homesick, or both.

It had taken him weeks to collect enough Cantonese vocabulary to even ask Junhui about it, who back then was merely his mentor in the exchange program, and all Soonyoung remembers is something about the city still building itself from the ground up with unyielding principles of fung soui, wide open cavities through the solid heart of a high rise so that dragons can still make it from the mountains to the sea.

You don’t come to Hong Kong looking to free yourself of superstition, Minghao told him, absently twisting one of his glinting silver rings. Soonyoung certainly didn’t—even now, he thinks he racked up a hearty string of funky mojo that’s been haunting him since a year ago. Junhui even gifted him miniature ceramic Fuk Luk Sau figurines for luck when he wouldn’t let it go. _Gods permitting,_ Minghao would say, straightening out the statues on the crooked shelf, lingering in the doorway of their dorm room, pulling his shoes on before they would head out for the night. _Somebody better be watching over us._

The Victoria Harbor tunnels are darker than Soonyoung remembers them being, the humming of the traffic a little bit like a plane taking off, and coming up out the other side feels so bright that his eyes water, then burn. Soonyoung sat on and broke his sunglasses back at the overcrowded terminal in Seoul.

“Look familiar?” Junhui asks from the driver’s seat, smiling at him from the corners of his eyes, air freshener swinging. He must mean the whole of Hong Kong Island, which has warped slightly in the passing year; new buildings, new streets, all the vendors set up in completely different locations.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung says, anyway, because through it all, he stills know what road they’re riding on. Where they’re going. The time is a distance he’s traveled in circles.

On a flight out of Hong Kong headed at nine hundred kilometers per hour back towards home, Soonyoung cried for the first half of it, then spent the rest staring down a text from his mom to hang on just a little while longer, baby, the last mile home is the one that always feels the longest. Airplane mode jeered at him. Seems like people only ever tell him the important things right before he’s boarding.

Right now, on the way back towards the intimidating rise of HKAPA campus and lofty apartment complexes, Soonyoung feels everything in his chest. Tries to remember how long he’s been trying to fit all this together, or when he stopped trying to.

Hong Kong isn't home, but sometimes Soonyoung thinks that it could be. Wishes for it, even.

 

Gods permitting.

 

/

 

Minghao’s hair is longer but also lighter, and he's grown an inch or two, enough that Soonyoung has to look up at him a little now to meet his eyes instead of staring straight at him.

He’s chopping vegetables with headphones in when Junhui opens the door to the apartment, and Soonyoung is hit with the sharp smell of green onions and a cool wall of aircon, then a heavy feeling somewhere at the crest of his ribs just at the silhouette of him.

Junhui strides inside, abandoning Soonyoung and his suitcase by the door, and taps Minghao on the shoulder. Startled, he jumps, then drops the knife loudly on the cutting board.

“Wen _Junhui_ ,” Minghao complains, tugging his headphones to rest around his neck and tossing him a sour looking pout. Then, as if suddenly remembering, he whirls around to face the door, headphone cord catching and tugging his phone off the counter with the movement. It hits the floor facedown.

“Um,” Soonyoung says.

Minghao yanks the headphones off and puts them down on the counter next to the fallen knife. Soonyoung stays right where he is, knee deep in a memory.

“You changed your hair color,” Minghao says, in lieu of a greeting. Soonyoung had been bleach bottle blonde the last time he was here, scalp totally fried, ends frizzy like he’d just been electrocuted any time somebody looked at him. It’s black now, the careful work of Mingyu in his dimly lit bathroom three weeks ago, the acrid smell of the dye stinging in his nose. The color still bleeds, staining the bottom of the shower curtain a sickly blackish blue.

Soonyoung tugs on a strand of his bangs. “Yeah,” he says, throat dry. His heart slams inside his chest, again unused to being looked at so closely.

Minghao smiles, takes a step forward, and pushes his hand back through it, watching as it all falls back into Soonyoung’s eyes, a few weeks out from his last professional haircut. “I like it.”

Soonyoung opens his mouth and then closes it, forgets what to say. Minghao turns around and picks up a julienned carrot slice, waves it in his face. “Open up,” he says. “I know what your diet is like.”

“I eat vegetables!” Soonyoung protests, but Minghao pops it onto his tongue the second his mouth opens to form a vowel. Minghao grins, chewing on a slice of his own—and just like that, Soonyoung’s got himself all backwards again, looking between Minghao and Junhui with his heart wading through the apartment like it’s all made of bright red goo, raspberry jam, sticky spoiled honey. Can’t go around, can’t get over it.

Junhui crouches down, picking up Minghao’s fallen cell phone, and presses the home button with a wince. Minghao’s indiscernible background photo lights up behind a spiderweb of cracks in the screen’s thin glass, tiny shards coming loose from the plate.

“Um,” Junhui starts. His brows furrow as a loose piece pricks his finger, holding the phone out for Minghao to take back. Soonyoung thinks of his shattered glasses at the bottom of a trashcan in an airport in Seoul, then uses his nails to pop the shard out from the pad of Junhui’s finger as he states the obvious and Minghao makes a face at the screen of his phone. “Well,” Junhui says. “I guess that broke.”

 

/

 

“I’m really sorry,” Soonyoung says again, hands clasped behind his back, twisting together.

Minghao waves him off, runs his hand back through his hair, and shakes his head. “Stop apologizing,” he says. “My screen shattering isn’t your fault at all.”

“I know, but—”

“No.”

“Agh,” Soonyoung whines. “Okay, fine.” His eyes follow the line of Minghao’s shoulder all the way down to his elbows, radius, ulna, watching him idly stir the contents of the smoking metal pot. The smell of stir fry floods his senses like a sinus clearing medicine. “Don’t make it too spicy.”

“I won’t,” says Minghao, glancing backwards, eyes crinkling with a halfway smile. “Now would you sit down already? You standing there like that is weirding me out—unless you want to eat more carrots?—come here actually.”

“No thanks! You’ve made your point, I’ll go bother Junhui.”

Minghao laughs, high, staccato beat, turning back to the stovetop as Soonyoung retreats to the living room and sits down on Junhui’s outstretched feet, sinking back into the cushions of the couch. Junhui wiggles his toes beneath Soonyoung’s thighs but doesn’t move them, just gets comfortable again. He sets the TV remote on the arm, laying down.

“What are we watching?” Soonyoung says.

Junhui glances sparingly at the television, purses his lips, then looks at Soonyoung, and smiles. “Who cares?” he says. “You have to tell me everything we missed while you were away, I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen you. And I like seeing you! I think I should get to do it all the time.”

Soonyoung pulls Junhui’s feet out from under him and lays them across this lap, palms against Junhui’s bare ankles, thumbprint pressed to the jutting bones. “I—” he starts, pushing down on the contents of a dozen hour long phone calls across the yellow sea, Minghao’s voice, his stories, his humor—all never any substitute for the real thing. The contact frequency got lower and lower as the months ticked by, a half life. It was the same with Junhui; a rolling credit scroll of his sporadic texts, laid out like a symbol of language’s failings, how it was never big enough, good enough, close enough. “Um.”

Soonyoung’s got it bad; that slightly bruised longing, that right-here-all-the-time type shit, peach pit ache. Junhui sits up, puts his chin on his knees, lets his expression fall open with ease.

“Don’t be shy!” he says.

Soonyoung’s not shy—or at least he didn’t use to be.

“How was graduation?”

“Great,” Soonyoung says. Turns out running away from things doesn't make them go away, after all. Seriously.

 

/

“Night,” Junhui says quietly, leaning out the bedroom doorway. Minghao’s already gone off to wash and scrub his face, wished for him to rest well, and asked if he had enough blankets to keep warm for the night. Junhui smiles gleefully. “Dream of me,” he says, wistful, laughing to himself before disappearing through the door and into the velvet dark.

Soonyoung picks at the rough fabric of the couch, stares down at it. He caught a glimpse of the wide mattress in the single bedroom, earlier, and now he doesn’t even know what he expected, anyways.

Of course he’d sleep on the pull out couch. In Seoul during the in-betweens, sleeping alone started to feel like a victory—Junhui used to lift the blankets and invite him under, back when they all shared bunks in a dorm, let Soonyoung bury his face in the dip between Junhui’s shoulder blades, smell his laundry detergent and sleep. A night in Minghao’s bed was much rarer—Soonyoung would always be freshly showered, skin warm, hair damp and frizzy from bleach damage against the pillows, and Minghao would occasionally offer to scratch his back, short blunt nails slipping beneath the hem of his shirt until he finally gave way to unconsciousness. His own top bunk went empty more often than not.

Soonyoung stares at the ceiling; in this new apartment, there’s a different number of tiles to count, listening to Minghao’s light laughter through the wall, closing his eyes, and welcoming the dark.

 

/

 

Breakfast gets skipped when Soonyoung sleeps all the way through it. Flying makes him tired—regardless of the journey length or jetlag—the atom deep kind. When he finally peels his eyes open, Soonyoung rolls onto his side atop the couch to see Junhui stretching aimlessly on the floor before him. The the shower is running noisily through the bathroom wall.

Junhui glances over at him as he reaches for his toes. “Oh! Morning,” he says. Glances at the clock. “Or afternoon?”

Soonyoung blinks slowly, closing one eye as he yawns and presses his face to the couch so as not to get lint in it. In his sleep, he’s kicked most of the blankets to the floor, a draft raising goosebumps on his skin. “Hi,” he says. It’s jarring to have awoken here, even after thinking about it so long, wishing to have it back. He rolls off the couch and onto the floor, drops his head onto Junhui’s thigh and looks up at him from below.

“Minghao’s showering,” Junhui says. He smiles down at Soonyoung, squishes his face together with a laugh, smoothing his hair back. “Are you hungry? We were thinking of late lunch. Guess where.”

Soonyoung makes an unimpressed face. “Your favorite,” he offers flatly.

Junhui’s grin gets wider. “My favorite!” he echoes, and then falls all the way back onto the floor.

Soonyoung pinches the skin above Junhui’s knee, cackles when he yelps. “This is the welcome week I get, huh?” Sitting up, he pokes Junhui in the stomach, makes him curl up like a potato bug. “All my taste buds burned to oblivion right from the start?”

Junhui starfishes on the floor, kicks at him. “Yes,” he says sagely. “It’s going to be amazing.”

“Hey,” says Minghao, appearing in the bedroom doorway, scrubbing at his hair with an old looking, bleach stained towel. “Get dressed, I’m starving.” He squints. “Quit squabbling.”

“I’m gonna get sweaty,” Soonyoung whines, pulling back against Junhui’s steady grip on his arm.

“I like it when you get sweaty,” Junhui says, smiling devilishly. “It’s so fun to watch you suffer!”

Minghao grins over Junhui’s shoulder, head tilting, smile uneven. “We won’t make you eat as much as we used to,” he says placatingly. “Junnie will play nice.”

Junhui nods seriously, tugging on his arm again. “Let’s eat together,” he says, dragging Soonyoung down on top of him. “It’s literally the spice of li—”

“You’re not funny,” Soonyoung interrupts, staring down the megawatt, marble sculpture that is Junhui’s happiest face. He barely lasts three seconds, has to look away to Minghao impatiently sorting through his suitcase for him, frowning at Soonyoung’s accumulative collection of tacky graphic tees. He overturns an offensively purple shirt, abandoning it over the arm of the couch, then pauses briefly, hand hovering above another stack of clothes in the case. The image before Soonyoung grounds him, momentarily, feeling like there’s bubble gum sticking his body to the floor. Minghao blinks, shakes his head, and continues his search.

“I’m very funny,” Junhui retorts, right at the same time Minghao rights himself to his full height and says, “you seriously didn’t bring any plain black shirts?”

 

/

 

Junhui reaches over to plaster a dry napkin to Soonyoung’s sweaty forehead, holding his bangs back like the sober friend helping the birthday girl not to puke. “Your stamina has improved!”

Soonyoung shakes his head, the napkin unfolding and falling into his eyes, and sniffles. The spice makes his lips burn and turn red. “It didn’t,” he says desperately, napkin ungluing and falling to the table. “I just got better at not crying, is all.”

Minghao chews slowly across from him at the table, serene, and pushes a bowl of rice towards him. “You’ll be okay. It's good, though, right?”

Soonyoung nods. He feels like the burn is traveling through his entire nervous system, now, red hot all the way down to his toes. Junhui sticks another paper napkin to him. He’s like wet drywall, freshly laid plaster, has his bangs sticking to his forehead like elmer’s glue. His mouth stings, but the flavor is amazing. He hardly blinks when Minghao reaches across the table with some other godforsaken thing between his chopsticks, hand cupped beneath Soonyoung’s chin in case it falls, just opens his mouth and catches everything between his teeth.

He remembers this feeling; overwhelming, the flustered object of Minghao and Junhui’s attention, getting sort-of-wined, completely dined, lead around the city like a dog on it’s leash. These days, Soonyoung goes willingly.

Junhui watches him chew, expression wide open and waiting. He hates wasting food—either the plate is clear or you’re not finished eating yet; it’s why meals together have always been the tradition, the weeknight pastime; an entire table of plates licked clean is Junhui’s goodnight kiss equivalent, and three big eaters at one tiny street table is practically the definition of love. “Should we get dessert?”

“Can I digest for half an hour?” Minghao complains, picking the last dumpling from the basket, chewing around his words.

“I guess,” Junhui sighs. He looks to Soonyoung. “They moved our favorite ice cream joint,” he explains, standing up. “If we leave and start walking now, we’ll probably get there by the time Minghao’s made room for dessert?”

“Sit down,” says Minghao, sharp as ever, “I’m paying.”

“No you’re not,” Junhui replies, waving at him with his wallet. “I won’t let you.”

Soonyoung stands, too. Knocks his cup from the table clumsily. It’s made of cheap plastic so it only bounces, then rolls slowly towards the street. “Can’t I pay?”

“Don’t be Switzerland,” says Junhui, at the same time Minghao eyes him, says, “cute.”

Soonyoung grins sheepishly. Minghao watches the glass roll into the gutter, come to a halt sideways against the concrete, then goes to pick it up. Junhui takes the opportunity to scamper off to the register and pay, so Soonyoung sits down again, defeated.

Minghao sets the glass down in front of him. “Have you been getting clumsier at the academy back in Seoul?” he asks, dry as hell. “Instructors finally had enough of you in beginners ballet?”

Soonyoung looks past Minghao’s shoulders to Junhui, waving them out from the register. “That was only an elective,” he says primly. The register dings, mechanical, rough in the ears. He stands, pirouettes as he passes Minghao. “And I’m only getting more graceful, actually.”

Junhui stops his spinning, points him northwards down the street, out from beneath the yellow awning. “Minghao’s been getting more rebellious,” he says, pretending to share a secret. “Though all the junior ballet teachers still love him.” He widens his eyes comically, though it doesn’t make him any less attractive. “I think it’s hypnotism. Seriously.”

 

/

 

Junhui gets green tea flavored ice cream in a cone, orders Minghao vanilla, then turns to Soonyoung, asks what flavor he wants, and Soonyoung knows he’s getting tricked out of footing the bill again. He considers getting hot fudge to make him pay for it, but decides he’d just make a mess of himself, and is perfectly capable of sweet talking Minghao into a lick if he get’s bored of his own ice cream’s taste.

“Sick of me yet?” Soonyoung asks, and doesn’t even realize how he sounds, the question cutting through the quiet crispness of the air conditioning.

“‘Course not,” says Junhui. To himself, he snickers. “I got my vaccines. I’m immune.”

Minghao snorts, hiding his mouth behind his hand. He snatches his cone away when he catches Soonyoung trying to take a bite out of it, pushing open the front door of the storefront and stepping back out into the street. It’s more humid exiting than it was when they entered—the kind of air that’s thick enough to feel as you move, cut it with a knife.

Halfway back to the apartment, the sky thunders, then starts pouring out rain water, drops leaving craters in the remains of Soonyoung’s ice cream the size of fingertips. He tosses it into the next trash can he sees, no desire to eat watered down sweets.

Heat lightning flashes, illuminating Minghao and Junhui all white in front of him as the rain starts coming down harder, clothes sticking to him like a second skin.

When they finally make it into the lobby of their building, Soonyoung got an inch of water sloshing in the soles of his shoes. Minghao tosses all their clothes into a dryer in the basement, shaking his head as he watches the weather turn itself inside out, roll. “Welcome back,” he says, eyes cast up at the sky from the window.

Soonyoung supposes that that’s just the thing about Hong Kong, about setting yourself directly in the crosshairs of where the wind meets the shoreline meets the sea.

No matter what—you’re gonna get a damn good storm.

 

/

 

In the morning, Minghao appears and disappears, ducking out into the corridor, hand cupped around the speaker of his phone as he replies quietly to whoever is on the other end of the line. Before Soonyoung falls back asleep, he listens to the never ending loop of Minghao pacing down the up and down the hallway, his footsteps muffled on the other side of the door.

 

/

 

The waterfront is crawling with people, this late in the day. The humidity lifts as the sun disappears behind the horizon, city lights flickering on one by one, orange and yellow ripples shimmering along the surface of Kowloon bay. Junhui tugs on Minghao’s arm, pointing away.

“Let’s get grilled squid,” he says. “I bet I can get us a discount from the stand lady.”

Soonyoung follows Minghao’s back through the crowd towards the smell of teriyaki, chili paste, barbecue, the breeze cool against his neck off the water.

Junhui pushes him forwards as they reach the front of the line, and he orders clumsily, stumbling over consonants. The squid lady finds it endearing enough to really give them a discount, and Soonyoung scurries away with the skewers while Minghao pays, embarrassed.

Overcrowded, the only place to sit is a concrete step overlooking the promenade. The ferris wheel spins slowly.

Soonyoung glances around, back over his shoulder, and squints. He can feel the low rumble of bass in the concrete, the tinny cadence of old speakers. There's buskers down by the water. “Didn’t we choreograph to this last year?”

Minghao pauses his chewing, stops to listen. “Yeah,” he says. “We got stuck reworking—this part—for nearly a week. Remember? Our grade was so painfully average we wished we had just failed the assignment instead.”

Junhui licks stray chili sauce from the side of his hand. “We didn’t know each other well then! It’s all history, anyway,” he says. “We could do it ten times better now, right?”

Soonyoung bites his squid, careful not to hit the skewer, and waits for the explosion of flavor in his mouth. The texture is familiar, satisfying and chewy, nose stinging as he inhales the smell of teriyaki and chili paste. The noise of the crowd swells. “What _are_ we gonna do now?”

Minghao wipes his hands clean, setting his clean skewer at his feet. He glances sidelong at Soonyoung past Junhui, careful. “Do you think you’re going to stay in Seoul?”

Junhui turns to face him, expression curious. Soonyoung swallows.

“I don’t know,” Soonyoung says, throat closing. Hong Kong’s like a white hot ball of longing; Soonyoung is the planet that keeps circling around it’s warmth—he wakes up burned and blistered each and every morning. He picks at his cuticles, averts his eyes from the weight of Minghao’s gaze.  “I—um—still don’t know which of my options is best. I just graduated so...I thought maybe I should rest for a little, and then everything might be clearer to me. I feel a little lost right now.”

Junhui grabs his wrist, leans over, and steals a bite from Soonyoung’s squid skewer. “Me too,” he says, chewing. “Lucky Minghao’s got a whole year left to figure everything out.”

Minghao rolls his eyes.

Soonyoung grins, pointing his skewer at him. “I think Minghao already _has_ everything figured out.”

“Mhm,” hums Junhui, elbowing Soonyoung. “Yeah. Look at that smarmy face—Minghao, let us in on your secrets, huh?”

“Never.”

“Evil,” whispers Junhui behind his hand.

“No respect for his elders,” Soonyoung whispers back.

“I respect you just fine,” complains Minghao. “Act your ages and maybe I’ll consider it.”

Junhui laughs loudly, head thrown back. “You say that like you’re not the one with half the personality of a fifty year old man.”

“Hey—”

“Is there an off switch on the proverbs?” Soonyoung starts, chin in his hand. “Reset button maybe?”

“I’m not as bad as you’re making me out to be!”

Junhui tilts his head this way and that, like he’s weighing his options. He turns to Soonyoung. “He did pay for grilled squid.”

Soonyoung shrugs, faux-haughty. “I suppose it is kind of endearing.” Minghao makes a face like an overloved cat, shakes his hair out like the compliment is water that has to be flung off him.

“Quit changing the subject, _go_ ,” Minghao says. His face is serious again, a single wrinkle between his brows. “I just thought that you might have looked at some of the studios we used to frequent.” Soonyoung catches a look, a glance, feeling a big ache. Minghao collects the skewers, stray napkins, holds them between his hands like a fucked-up bouquet. “Since you liked it here, I mean.”

Junhui nods, a kind of certainty to it. “Hong Kong loves you,” he says. “Even the squid lady tries to give you stuff for free.”

Soonyoung thinks it might be the other way around—he loves Hong Kong, but it sure as hell doesn’t love him back. This city sent him home with a mile long streak of sour luck, a newfound gracelessness. Or maybe, Soonyoung doesn’t love this city, he just loves what it has shown him.

“Our relationship is complicated,” Soonyoung amends, smiling sideways.

Junhui smacks his arm, and Minghao calls him a player before he walks off in search of somewhere to throw out all their trash. “Complicated,” Junhui repeats. “Ah. What isn’t?”

 

/

 

On Soonyoung’s last night in Hong Kong before his morning flight home, Minghao and Junhui took him down Temple Street through the night market. Classes were over, the sun was sinking in the sky, and the air smelled of citrus, greens, leather and antiques. Fortune tellers called after them as they passed, the bells in the temple softly ringing, distant.

Soonyoung borrowed a swiss army knife from a vendor at the market, watched Junhui splitting open a sun colored dragon fruit like he’d been parting the red sea, scoring it’s surface into uneven cubes, felt how the heat just sweltered.

Yellow is the color of wanting—he had read so in a required lit class the previous spring, Junhui doodling smudgy cats with black ink in the margins of his notebook next to him, zoning out so hard they could barely focus on anything at all.

It was a night that wove through the city; several bars, Temple Street, Minghao’s bed, on top of Junhui. Soonyoung hadn't been there long enough to really map it.

In the middle of the market, though, Minghao’s fingers slipped into his mouth as the traffic parted like river to rock around them, pressing down on his tongue as he placed a square of fruit there, his eyes dark while he waited for Soonyoung to chew, swallow, lick his lips, like he was saying; here is the harvest—now eat.

 

/

 

Soonyoung hangs off Minghao while he sorts through a table of secondhand watches, eyeing Junhui as he chats with the woman frying oyster cakes two stalls over.

“Getting anything?” Soonyoung says.

Minghao taps the glass face of a silver watch, twisting the crown, something inside it broken since the minute hand won’t move. “No,” says Minghao, straightening up. “Where’s Junhui?”

“Oyster cakes,” Soonyoung replies, nodding his head towards the stand, steam from the stovetops obscuring his line of vision.

Junhui’s getting handed his paper plate by the time Soonyoung reaches him, gingerly biting the cake, too hot. He fans his mouth, tongue out over his teeth, and Minghao steals a mouth-searing bite for himself, huffing out steam like a dragon when the whole thing is too hot to chew or swallow.

“I was thinking,” Junhui says,  folding the plate in half so that the cakes don't fall, “we’re already here; we should get our fortunes read!”

Soonyoung glances down the street towards the end of the market, where it peters off into the curving road that leads to Tin Hau temple, past the lights, the flags, the shifting crowds of people. The walk is easier past the red gates, the tables no longer so densely packed together.

Junhui takes his pick of fortune tellers, offering Minghao the last of the oyster cakes as he leads them towards the end of the row, a red tent with half the curtain’s tied back, hanging yellow tinted light illuminating it from the inside.

“Hi,” Junhui says, ducking into the opening, “there’s three of us.”

The fortune teller is younger than Soonyoung expected, hair tied back loosely, silver rings glinting on her fingers. She peers around Junhui, sizes up the other two of them, then rights herself in her seat. “Would you like to go together, or separately?”

Junhui offers Soonyoung and Minghao a quizzical glance. Minghao shrugs, Soonyoung mirrors him. Junhui flattens cash against her table. “Separately,” he says, with the smile of a cheshire cat.

She counts it, then looks up. “Which one of you wants to go first?”

Minghao nudges Soonyoung forward, a hand at his lower back. “Soonyoung will,” he says. “He’s never gotten a fortune, before.”

The fortune teller beckons him in, shooing the others out, and releases the knot holding the curtain back, closing them off from the street, the market. He sits down.

“What year were you born?” she says.

Soonyoung looks at her, then the table, trying to make out the characters on her rings. “1996.”

“Of course,” she says easily. “Month? Date?”

“June fifteenth.”

The fortune teller eyes him intensely, observing his face. Soonyoung feels like a bug being examined through the bottom of a wine glass, trapped in, warped out. He looks at a faint indented scar down the side of her face, unable to meet her gaze. Suddenly, the corner of her lip tugs up, half a smile.

“You feel you’ve been doing things in the wrong order,” the fortune teller says.

Soonyoung shifts uncomfortably on the plastic purple stool, nearly knees the underside of the table with the speed he sits back, sits up.

It all comes back to him in moments; flashes of skin, Minghao’s perfect wrists, the small of Junhui’s back—how afterwards he fell asleep immediately, woke up, ate raspberries from a plastic tin in front of the open fridge, blue light washing his flushed skin faded purple, wished someone would come out from the dim bedroom and lick the sticky red stain out from the valley grooves in his fingertips. Instead, there’s a smudgy red stain on the fabric handle of his suitcase, faded pink in the middle from Mingyu’s relentless scrubbing away at it when he finally brought the damn thing back to Seoul.

“I—I guess,” Soonyoung manages. Sweat rolls down the dell of his back. He thinks this might be the hottest day of the year, the heaviness of it persisting even past nightfall, so humid that if he washed his hair, it wouldn’t dry for hours. It’s jungle weather, and heartache is on the prowl. Has teeth. Bites.

The fortune teller smiles, two neat rows of pearly whites. Soonyoung withers instantly under the fireceness of her stare, looks to her earrings instead. Focuses on the holes punched right through the dangling silver plates of them. “But,” she starts, fingernails tapping across the rickety table, “you’ve had the luck to meet that which matches your desires.”

Behind Soonyoung, the red sheet curtain draws open minimally, then stops, like the false start of a grand, operatic play, leaving a sliver of mottled neon colored light from the night market slicing up the center of his back, over his hair, and into the eye of the fortune teller. Distantly, he hears Minghao’s voice telling Junhui to quit being so nosey, to wait for his turn. She glances up at them, then back at Soonyoung, raises a brow.

Soonyoung shifts again, crossing his legs the other way, one foot going full tv static, nearly asleep. The plastic stool is not particularly accommodating. “I—” he starts, stops. “I’m only here for eight days. I don’t feel very lucky.”

The fortune teller must see something in his face, leaning forward, narrowing her eyes. “What’s in your suitcase?”

The bumpiness of the conversation is jarring. Soonyoung can’t keep up. “What?” he says, reeling. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” she repeats, eyebrows furrowing. “Perhaps I’m wrong, then. Are the things you’re carrying not too heavy?”

Soonyoung chokes on the words in his mouth.

The fortune teller barrels on. “Too heavy, or too many?” she asks. “Either get stronger, or let something go.”

“I want to hold on,” Soonyoung says. The sentence just fall out of him. He feels like he’s been hypnotized, put under a spell.

“Then lighten that load.” Her fingernails tap against the table again, and the haze just splits. “Send one of your...friends in.”

Soonyoung stands up, Junhui pulls back the drapes, and Minghao peers in over his shoulder, eyes wide and blinking.

Soonyoung steps out, a weight in his stomach as Junhui slides past him, already announcing his birthdate as the curtain starts to close.

“So,” Minghao says, “how’d it go?”

Soonyoung smiles grimly. He hasn’t got jack to say to that.

 

/

 

Soonyoung accompanies Junhui on his way to an interview at a familiar studio upon the promise of milk tea. After jumping through a series of conversational hoops with the director, Soonyoung gets vaguely inducted as an interviewee. 

"I remember you, you're the second one," the director says, smiling.  _"_ Though I swear there was three."

"The third one has graduated yet," says Junhui. "He's the baby."

The director laughs. Soonyoung, unprepared, has to show him grainy, poorly filmed dance videos from his instagram, then gets a long, verbal recommendation letter straight from the mouth of Junhui. He calls Soonyoung relentless. A hard worker. Busy.

When they get home, Minghao's rearranged the living room. It's unrecognizable. Soonyoung, thinking he's just busted in to somebody else's apartment, nearly turns around and leaves.

"What's with the...?" Soonyoung starts. This whole day's been throwing him totally off kilter, a planet tilting off it's axis, spinning freely.

Minghao looks out over the living room like a king appreciating his kingdom. He shrugs. "It was bothering me," he says plainly, and Soonyoung's pretty sure that all the information he's going to get, guaranteed.

 

/

 

“Let’s do something,” Junhui says as they’re walking back from eating fried wontons at a hole in the wall joint Minghao knows, across the bay. “I feel like all we’ve done is eat, then sleep.”

“Sometimes we drive in between those things,” Soonyoung offers. His mouth still tastes of scallions and duck sauce.

Junhui shakes them both by the shoulder. “Wong Tai Sin is right there!”

“It's so touristy,” Minghao complains.

Soonyoung pipes in, voice wobbling as Junhui continues jostling him around. “Is that the one that grants wishes? You already took me there last year, right?”

Junhui steps out in front of them, walking backwards. “A wish is a wish,” he says, hands on his hips, a perfect figure of beauty—people walking towards them shuffle out of his way, Junhui too distracted to pay attention. “A wish is a wish, no matter how many tourists it’s witnessed by.”

 

/

 

Soonyoung walks slowly through the temple gardens, the smell of incense still strong in his nose.

Minghao and Junhui are burning joss sticks outside the temple, flickering in and out of Soonyoung’s vision as they move through the wispy smoke. Soonyoung looks down into the water, still and mossy green, muddying up the bridge’s red reflection.

It felt a little rude, to make another wish, when last years still hasn’t been totally granted yet. Like he was asking for too much. Instead he passes through the gates again, avoiding eye contact with a green tinged statue of a dragon, body coiled up.

Soonyoung’s been chasing the closest feeling he ever got to that fulfillment for a while now; testing his chemistry with anyone in Seoul who was willing, wanted to try. The walkway circles back to the bridges over the pond again, a long, lazy loop. He loiters beneath one of the pavillions, eyeing the waterfall.

Some people were like wide open pools to fall into; it was easy, no gimmicks. Soonyoung tried it plenty of times, kissed his way through Itaewon and Hongdae, but no date, no touch, no conquest—none were ever even half as satisfying as Minghao and Junhui had been. He couldn’t recreate the love, that gratifying ache, how having to leave it broke his heart like a horse or it’s leg.

If some people were swimming pools, Soonyoung’s total time in Hong Kong was like this; circus style, high diving into a bucket. In need of a little luck on his side.

 

If you want the points, you better do a few tricks.

 

/

 

“Must’ve been one hell of a lay, if you’re this twisted up about it,” Jihoon had said, when he finally got Soonyoung to stop freaking out all over the place and _spit it the hell out, Kwon Soonyoung._ He’d been back from Hong Kong for less than two weeks, failed to unpack completely, and already raised alarm flags in the ever observant eye of one of his long term roommates, Lee Jihoon.

“It’s not—that isn’t—”

“So it isn’t just about sex?”

Soonyoung felt his pulse shorting like he had a broken pacemaker keeping the beat going _bump, bump, bump._ “No,” he said, finally. “And if it was, I wouldn’t want it to be.”

Jihoon looked way too casual for this conversation right now, glancing up occasionally from the rhythm game he was destroying on his old ass phone. Soonyoung couldn’t figure out if he wanted Jihoon to take him more seriously or less.

“Why did you do it, then?” Jihoon said.

 _I was drunk_ , Soonyoung wanted to say, but he wasn’t, and he knew it. Minghao only let him have a sip of whatever bright pink fruity martini he had ordered for himself, told Soonyoung he didn’t want him to be hungover _and_ flying internationally in a span of twenty-four hours, that’s the mixing your darks and lights of travel. He was stone cold sober, he just couldn’t stop. He had no brakes, no barriers in front of him. None.

Jihoon lost the level, _GAME OVER_ chiming out into the room from the tinny speakers on his phone, and trained Soonyoung with one of those dead eyed looks. He seemed disgusted by Soonyoung’s complete lack of self control or character, though Soonyoung supposes with Jihoon, that’s all kind of par for the course. “What is it that you wanted to happen?”

Soonyoung opened his mouth, then closed it. Even in Hong Kong, Soonyoung knew.

He just pretended not to.

 

/

 

“This doesn’t even taste good,” complains Junhui.

Minghao slides the glass back towards himself. “That’s why I didn’t order it for you.”

Soonyoung steals the drink away from him, taking a sip. “Oh, ew,” he says, face twisting. “It’s like paint thinner. Is that supposed to be whiskey?”

Minghao smiles, wide and glittering, brown hair tinted canary yellow in a retro neon glow. “I like it.”

The bartender slides two short glasses down the counter, contents bright orange, massive hunks of ice clinking. Soonyoung plucks out the paper umbrella and opens it, sticking it behind Minghao’s ear.

“It’s a rooftop,” Minghao says, watching Soonyoung tilt his glass back. His mouth floods with lemon, strawberry, caramel and kumquat, the hot coal burn of vodka. It goes down easy. Junhui plucks the split fruit from the rim of his own glass and eats the whole thing in one go.

As the night gets later, the music gets louder; Minghao’s whiskey is replaced with _baak zau_ , Soonyoung and Junhui trade off on ordering rounds of shots. The door to the bar stays open longer, all the cold air rushing out into the street, temperature rising as collective body heat radiates from the night crowd in waves.

The alcohol makes Soonyoung melt, makes him want to shake his inhibitions out, spinning around idly in his barstool seat. Junhui digs change out from his jean pockets and waltzes his way towards the jukebox, dragging Soonyoung with him, silhouette bright orange in it’s neon strip glow. He sorts through the cue cards.

“You pick,” Junhui says, depositing a handful of coins into Soonyoung’s open palm, fingers curling over Soonyoung’s shoulders. The heat sticks to him like a fever. Junhui’s weight is warm against his back, pressed against him, peering at the jukebox selection from over his shoulders before peeling himself away again, heading back to the bar, the counter.

Soonyoung’s brain doesn’t work, feeling the phantom weight of Junhui still hanging from his shoulders. He hits next six times then pays for whatever song he ends up landing on, coins clanging as they fall into the slots. Minghao is watching him when he turns around, dark and doll-eyed, and Soonyoung realizes there’s no running from this shit—not away, not far, not even in opposite directions. He crosses the floor, weaving through the crowd, mouth still tasting of fruit; sweet skin, sour center, the universal tang of need, want, hunger.

Friday night has the bar jam-packed with people, no straight path back the way he came. He goes around, takes the scenic route, blinks his vision back together.

When he looks to the bar for Minghao and Junhui, the room just splits. Briefly, like walls of incense smoke falling away, it’s tunnel vision; the ease of Junhui’s hand at Minghao’s hipbone, how close they are as they speak to each other.

By the time he gets there, Soonyoung’s more drunk than he realized. He settles heavily back onto the bar stool, drinks the water collecting in the bottom of his old glass, melted and cold from the ice. The music fades, then changes. Seventies funk hits his senses, synthesizer bass pulsing through the sound system. Minghao starts laughing and doesn’t stop, hand gripping the inside of Soonyoung’s knee as the force of it has him bent over. “Spectacular song choice,” he says, head thrown back.

“It was an accident,” pouts Soonyoung. Junhui nods sagely, standing up out of his stool to mimic a disco move, falling back against the bar when the cackling takes over again.

“It’s a retro bar,” Soonyoung defends, crossing his arms. Junhui pats his thigh. “This is secretly what you wanted.”

Minghao makes it through one more glass of _baak zao_ before Junhui looks between them and decides it’s time to call it quits. “I’ll grab a taxi,” he says, surprisingly coherent, though a little pink in the face. “In a minute, come meet me outside.”

Minghao pays their tab, letting Soonyoung cling to him as they make their way towards the door. Junhui’s leaning into a red cab’s window outside, talking with the driver as he stalls. Minghao opens the back door, climbing in across the wide seat, Soonyoung after him. Junhui ducks, folds himself to slide inside, shutting the door behind him. As cars pass, the wind vortex make the taxi shake.  

“You alright?” Minghao says, head tilting forward. Soonyoung nods, feeling the pressure of being squeezed between two bodies, thigh against thigh on either side, road surging out before him through the windshield like an old school racing game. Soonyoung’s seeing in 8-bit, the meter in the dashboard blinking red. The taxi turns a corner, momentum sliding him towards Junhui, crushing them together.

Minghao plays with his hair, tugging a little bit, letting Soonyoung’s head fall against the palm of his hand. Soonyoung’s got this thing about his scalp—ever since he bleached his hair the first time, it’s twice as sensitive, tingly all over, even now that it’s been dyed back to black. Junhui rolls the window down, inside of the car too stuffy. Yellow stripes of street lights roll across him, rushing over the planes of his face. Soonyoung stares at him through the half dark, fixating on the spidery shadows fanning out beneath Junhui’s lashes.

Soonyoung’s head hurts. He needs someone to snap his reality back, tell him that the past does not come back, ever—that he’s grasping at straws, needs to try and love this less, but the world just keeps spinning in fits and spurts, launching him right back to the beginning; how it all came reeling back to him like flipping through the cue cards behind the jukebox window, the winning screen at the top of a pinball machine, flashing out _LOVE, LOVE, LOVE,_ perspective like a sucker punch, hindsight 20/20.

The taxi pulls over one block from their building, unable to fit down the narrow side streets. Junhui scans his credit card, nodding along at the driver, half of Soonyoung’s useful Chinese vocabulary vacating his head. Minghao steps out on the drivers side and offers Soonyoung his hand, expression fond, keenly aware of his newfound level of drunk.

“Come here,” Junhui says, laughing, one step up from the street. The taxi drives off, exhaust pipe blasting him with a hot wave of air.

Soonyoung feels like he’s dying. He wants to take Junhui’s hand, or get carried the last block, up the stairwell, but instead—well. Soonyoung leans over on the sidewalk, and throws up.

 

/

 

Soonyoung wakes up to the sound of keys jingling, Minghao’s footsteps trailing past him towards the door. In the fuzzy dark, he sits up on the pull-out couch, blinking. “Minghao?” he says.

Minghao turns around, hand on the doorknob. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Did I wake you?”

Soonyoung shrugs, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, unable to gauge the time from the low light out the window, hidden behind the blinds. “Where are you going?”

“My parents are in town,” Minghao says. “I don’t think I’ll be back until at least tomorrow morning.” He pauses. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’ve been, uhm...better.” Soonyoung tracks the night back in his head, grimacing. “Did I at least brush my teeth?”

Minghao laughs. “Yes,” he replies. “We made sure of it, don’t worry.”

“Sorry for throwing up,” Soonyoung says, embarrassed.

Minghao drops his bag by the door, smoothing Soonyoung’s bed head down as he disappears back towards the bedroom. “It’s okay,” he says, reappearing, setting down a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin. “You did all of it outside, anyway.”

Soonyoung’s mortified. He hardly remembers the taxi ride.

Minghao barrels on, teasing. “You started speaking Korean to us,” he says. “Kept telling me to call you _hyung._ ”

“Ah, I get a little…”

Minghao waves his hand, smile flimsy, cutting him off. He sits down on the edge of the table, knobby knees wedged against the couch. “Stay hydrated,” he says. “It’s just you and Junnie today. He’ll probably want to do something fun, which will be a lot less fun if you’re this hungover.”

Soonyoung sits up, mouth feeling dry and pasty, and takes a sip of room temperature tap water from the glass on the table. Minghao pops the cap from the aspirin bottle, and shakes out two capsules, offering them up. “Thanks,” Soonyoung says, raspy. Minghao’s eyes follow the line of his throat when he swallows.

“I’d better get going,” Minghao says eventually.

Soonyoung lays down and closes his eyes as Minghao readjusts the blankets for him, hangover headache pulsing.

/

 

There are tropical fish hanging from the ceiling.

Junhui peers down at a bubbling tank full of guppies, his silhouette stark against the icy blue wall of goldfish in clear plastic bags. Everything sounds like it’s underwater.

“You ever kept fish?” Junhui asks.

“Not since I was a kid,”Soonyoung says, watching an eel make circles in it’s tank. The goldfish market smells like seawater; salt and brine, damp concrete.

“I keep wanting to get a few every time I’m around here…”

Junhui steps out in front of him, and the image sends Soonyoung whirling back to a year ago, to a picture Minghao took with the gritty lens of his iphone, his and Junhui’s faces warped like a funhouse mirror through the inch thick aquarium glass. Soonyoung had reposted it to his instagram, tagged Minghao in the oddly lit shape of his reflection in the tank, the first like notification obscured by a message from Hansol coming through, sending it right back to him, saying _who????_

 _Friends!_ Soonyoung had replied hastily, trying not to lose Minghao in the crowd. Even then, it was a liberal use of the term, a half truth. Soonyoung’s had friends before, but it was never like this. He’s been on dates, fucked around, and calling this friendship—then, as much as now—feels like playing dress up. Like playing pretend. Of course there’s been people who made Soonyoung nervous, made him eager, made him sweat, but being in Hong Kong again makes him feel like a bike with a broken wheel, a dog chasing cars down a hot concrete road.

 _Wow, hyung made friends,_ Hansol had sent back. _All u’ve been posting since u left is pix of ppls shoes!_

“Do you think Minghao would be mad if we brought home some fish?” Junhui says, leaning forward to eye a bright orange one, swimming lazy loops inside its plastic bag.

“Absolutely,” replies Soonyoung. “We don’t even have a tank.”

“But they’re so charming,” Junhui sighs. “Though I guess for Minghao we’d have to buy at least nine of them, and there’s definitely no room for that.”

“Nine?”

Junhui rights himself, tugging Soonyoung towards the koi tanks. “What, Xiao Hao hasn’t given you his speech yet?” Soonyoung shakes his head. Junhui sticks his index finger in the water, stroking along the scales of an all black fish like its a street cat, coiling around to get a go again. “He really likes fung soui lately—lucky numbers, all that. He says it gives his life order—to me it just seems like our apartment is incredibly well organized.”

“Oh,” Soonyoung says. Well. Maybe he can get behind _that._ These days, Soonyoung’s starting to think his luck is something that’s better off left completely alone, left as it is; a kind of garden you can’t prune, only make better through neglect.

 

/

 

Soonyoung pulls a loose cotton shirt on, checking the notifications on his phone. He leans in the bedroom doorway, casting a crisp-edged shadow onto the floor before him, the ankle of his sweatpants caught on his heel. “I didn’t get anything from Minghao, either,” he says. “He really must be staying out until tomorrow.”

“That rascal,” Junhui says, flopping down in the blankets. The air conditioner rumbles on, white noise.

Soonyoung laughs, leaning his head against the doorframe. “He’s with family. Still a punk, though.” He kicks his foot up, pulling the elastic from his ankle, takes a lingering look at Junhui. “Night,” he says quietly, retreating back towards the couch. He doesn’t even bother to pull it out, anymore, too much of a hassle to put the thing back together every morning.

“Soonyoung—” Junhui calls.

Soonyoung stops in his tracks, swiveling around. He peeks into the bedroom. “Yeah?”

Junhui rolls onto his side, lifting the blankets.

Soonyoung bites his lip, climbing up onto the bed, squinting against the glow of a mobile game on Junhui’s phone, flashing too bright. Minghao’s pillow smells faintly of floral perfume—Soonyoung buries his face in it, then scooches over to tuck himself against Junhui’s side like a sheet of algae clinging to a shoreline, to bedrock.

Easily, Junhui accommodates him, arm winding behind the back of Soonyoung’s head and around again, unphased in the middle of a round in piano tiles, thumb’s bright white in the phone light. _Clair de lune_ plays out faster and faster, the volume just loud enough to register.

Soonyoung curls over, resting his cheek on the flat of Junhui’s chest, watching the tiles go by in a pink and blue haze. He rests his palm on Junhui’s stomach, fingers curled around to his side, and closes his eyes. Just for a minute. The music stops, and Junhui’s plays with the unruly hairs sticking up at the top of Soonyoung’s head, tugging lightly on one so Soonyoung has to scowl at him and look up.

“You left the light on,” Junhui says, pouting. “I need the dark so I can sleep.”

“Just close your eyes,” Soonyoung complains. He wants to stay like this forever—would crawl inside Junhui’s shirt if he could.

“Please?” Junhui says, saccharine, sickly sweet. Soonyoung tries to ignore him, far too familiar with Junhui’s puppy eyes, face resolutely buried in the detergent scented fabric of his sleep shirt. Junhui pokes his cheek. He makes eye contact, weak for it.

Soonyoung sighs, exaggerated, and sits up, swinging his feet off the bed and padding quietly back into the living room. It takes a minute, searching for the switch on the cord of the lamp. Junhui starts another round of piano tiles, tinny as Soonyoung navigates his way back in the dark.

“You lost out there?” Junhui calls. Soonyoung hears the sound of the blankets shifting as he must lean over to see around the doorway, and looks away from the blurry shape of his feet on the floor at the direction of Junhui’s voice, the apartment all black before him.

“No,” says Soonyoung, and then yelps as he stubs his toe on the leg of the couch, bending over in agony to clutch it, hopping around on one foot. “Fuck!”

Junhui cackles, and blinds Soonyoung with the flashlight on his phone, illuminating the way back towards the bed. Soonyoung puts his aching foot back down to the floor and pouts. “I swear the couch wasn’t that close the the wall before.”

“Sure, sure,” allows Junhui. His flashlight clicks off again as Soonyoung’s knees hit mattress, and then he’s crawling under the blankets again, Minghao’s soap and perfume wafting up around him like a fog, laying on his stomach so he can fall asleep to the sound of _Bluestone Alley_ going faster and faster as Junhui’s nails tap against his screen.

“Hey,” whispers Junhui, turning onto his side, hand sliding down Soonyoung’s back, over the flimsy fabric of his t-shirt. “Come back over here. You’re like a space heater, and it’s so cold with the A/C.”

Soonyoung cracks an eye, peeking out from his divot in Minghao’s soft pillow. Junhui smiles in a small way, arm laid out and open. Soonyoung can’t help it—he rolls over, wraps his arms around Junhui’s ribcage and presses him flat to the mattress, smothering himself in the dip of Junhui’s clavicles. _Bluestone Alley_ starts up again over him.

“Is your foot okay?” Junhui asks belatedly, voice quiet.

“Yeah, just gonna hurt for a little while.”

His game of piano tiles pauses, _START AGAIN?_ blinking on the screen. “You sure?” he says, silly. “Maybe you should bring it up here so I can take a professional doctorly look at it.”

“You are the farthest thing from a professional doctor,” laughs Soonyoung, words blurring together as sleep starts to creep up on him. “And we shouldn’t look at my toes that closely. They’re not pretty, seriously—dancers feet, y’know?”

“They’re strong feet!”

Soonyoung’s eyes roll. “They’re fucked up, is what it is.”

Junhui puts his phone down on the bedside table with a quiet click, shifts so that Soonyoung’s nose is against his neck, half on top of each other. He snorts out a laugh, fiddles with the hairs at the nape of Soonyoung’s neck. “You know what Minghao would say to that, if he was here?”

Soonyoung smiles, so close to Junhui’s skin that he must be able to feel his teeth. The answer crops up in his head in barely four seconds—Minghao’s got a comeback for everything; advice, adages, witty yet somewhat irritating, age old parables. Soonyoung’s foot throbs in pain as he flexes it against Junhui’s ankle. “If Minghao was here,” Soonyoung recites dutifully, trying to mimic the soft cadence of his speaking voice, “he’d say that strong and fucked up are—more often than not—pretty much the same thing.”

 

/

 

Minghao is in the bed when Soonyoung wakes up.

Minghao, asleep on his side, chin tucked down against his chest. Soonyoung looks at the sloping line of his shoulder, the flat of his nose. Minghao’s eyebrows draw together, like he’s having a less than satisfactory dream. He sighs in his sleep, rolls over.

Soonyoung carefully pulls his legs out from beneath the comforter, and crawls to the end of the bed, swinging his feet down and heading for the bathroom. He washes his face, stares down his own reflection in the smudgy bathroom mirror, looking sickly in the unflattering fluorescent light. Soonyoung dries his hands. Drinks a glass of water.

By the time he ventures back into the bedroom, Junhui has rolled onto his stomach in the middle of the mattress, Minghao’s arm slung across his back.

Soonyoung freezes on the threshold, heart seizing up. It’s an image that's familiar to him, wasting so many afternoons like this in his months studying abroad here, filling up space.

Academy classloads make the body ache, week by week, but Soonyoung still came to class, stretched the tension out, put his good jeans on to go out half the nights with Minghao and Junhui. He did it like pain patches, salonpas spray, danced and drank the work week out. In their dorm, they’d lay on the floor together, too tired to make it even to the mattresses.

A warm hand against the back, someone bearing down on all the pressure points in your palm—these were the simple solutions. Like freezer peas, like love, the cheapest thing you can get your hands on, pressed against the sore spots.

It's nearly noon when Soonyoung dresses, puts on his shoes and bolts. He considers leaving a note in the kitchen, but figure he’ll just bring back a late lunch. Minghao is still sound asleep, which means he either came home incredibly late or exceptionally early, and Junhui will lay in bed for as long as you leave him.

Stepping into the street, Soonyoung finally places the specific scent of Minghaos perfume, sticking to him now after a few hours in his bed. It's the clean smell of a lotus flower, milk moon white as it busts up through the soil at night. Fresh. Balmy.

Ripe.

 

/

 

Saturday has the street teeming with people, a wall of noise rushing up around Soonyoung as his shoes hit the pavement.

He takes the tram up the waterfront of the island, sitting behind someone with their music so loud he can hear it playing through their headphones. He gets distracted looking at the water and misses the stop that will leave him by the ferries twice, back and forth on the route like a guard dog along a fenced in border, feeling like his heart is always getting off too early, or too late, or not  getting off at all.

The ferry ticket price is higher than usual, purchased last minute, and Soonyoung climbs to the top floor of the boat, tries to catch the feel of clean, ocean air in his lungs for a little while. It’s not nearly so hot out here, and he buries his hands in the pockets of his jeans, squinting against the slow-lowering sun. Halfway across the water, the ferry radio starts giving feedback.

He eats dim sum at a tea house being crushed beneath an old hotel, and the old server insists he recognizes him. When he passes Soonyoung a new plate, his hands are calloused. _You’re the one who always orders chicken feet,_ he says, sporting a smile that makes his skin fold.

It’s true that Soonyoung’s got a couple dishes he can’t resists asking for, fried then steamed chicken feet sitting pretty in the middle of that list, but Soonyoung’s never been here before. He insists upon it. _A familiar face, then,_ the server says, bringing out a shot of _baak zau_ he didn’t order. Even after the other night, Soonyoung’d rather drink a rooftop. The server prompts him, waiting.

Soonyoung smiles, swallowing it. Cheers.

 

/

 

Soonyoung wades through the slow flowing traffic, fish against the current, head swiveling as he searches out the same tent along Temple Street; red curtains, purple stools. He can’t think straight—should have gone home hours ago, burned his tongue eating taro cakes and _ha gaau_ with his left-out-for-too long tea—but as soon as he spots it, the gray dullness that’s settled in him dissipates. The night market pulses, technicolor.

Soonyoung puts one foot in front of the other, and pulls back the curtain.

“Hello again,” says the fortune teller, coy, looking up. Again, her earrings glitter.

Soonyoung pulls the stool out, sitting down. He opens his mouth, forgets what to say, closes it, eyes down.

The fortune teller tilts her head, maneuvering back into his line of vision. “You have the same face as before,” she says. “Still don’t know what you’re looking for?”

Soonyoung clasps his hands between his knees. “Yes,” he says, then, “Or—no.”

Lightly, she laughs. “Show me your hands.”

Soonyoung places both on the table, palm up. The fortune teller presses the fingers of his left hand flat, shooing his right away. She smiles. “Your heart line is deep,” she starts. Her long nail tickles as she traces it to between his fingers. “And it runs right between the mounts of Saturn and Jupiter. The love you have is true.” She meets his eyes as Soonyoung feels himself flush red all down his collar. “This is what you came here for, right?”

“To you?”

“No; to Hong Kong. For this love.”

Soonyoung swallows. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I did.”

Her thumbs flatten his hand again, nails digging in. “The more you think about it, the more it troubles you. Do you think you’re being selfish, or are you scared, Soonyoung?” She traces the connective point of his head and fate line around to the skin between his forefinger and thumb, stares at it. Soonyoung can’t answer that. Doesn’t know how to. Won’t. “Or maybe you’ve just spooked yourself. Maybe you’re being careful. Your head and fate lines are intertwined, after all.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Soonyoung says desperately. “I don’t know where I stand, anymore.”

“Well you’re here, aren’t you?”

Soonyoung pauses. There’s no sound of wind chimes, no Junhui to reel open the curtains, no Minghao to pester him about his fortune when he comes back out into the thrall. Just his hand on the table, the other against his thigh, the pain of being cracked open like earth under rain, tectonic slow, soft as mud.

“Last time,” he says, raspy. “When you asked what I had in my suitcase. I think I know what you meant, now.”

Facedown and half shattered in the bottom of his suitcase between one t-shirt in the next, Soonyoung remembers the painted faces of the three star gods.

On a flight from Hong Kong back towards home, the plane hit turbulence, and they shattered in his carry on as his bag fell from the overheads, the sound of it undetectable over the low engine hum, the head-pound heartbeat of a body post-cry, Soonyoung’s head tilted sideways against the window, watching clouds turn themselves over through the thick mass of glass. Soonyoung brought his bad luck with him, manifested it all by himself. 

_I think I know what you meant, now._

The fortune teller smiles. “Then what are you still talking to me for?” Her laugh is light and tinny. “Soonyoung, get up, and get out.”

 

/

 

As it turns out, Soonyoung’s a bigger coward than he may have accounted for. He stalls on the way to the apartment, stopping to pick up takeaway, walking the long route home. He starts hoping to run into an old classmate,waste his time and chat with as he cuts through the HKAPA campus, loitering when he makes it to Junhui and Minghao’s building’s main doors.

Soonyoung checks their mail for them, takes the stairs. Struggles with the lock and key, finally has to use his shoulder to finally shove open the poorly fitted door.

Finding the apartment empty brings Soonyoung a sense relief and discomfort in equal measure—the momentum he built up as he was climbing the stair well immediately dead in the water. He checks the bedroom, twice, just to be certain he’s alone, then leaves dinner in the fridge, his bare feet cold against the tiles as he paces the floor.

He remembers what Junhui said, sitting out at the waterfront; _Hong Kong loves you._ Soonyoung feels more like this city chewed him up, never spat him out, swallowed him down like a tonic, like medicine, bitters for a sore throat.

His phone vibrates with an incoming text, stomach lurching until he sees it’s just a selfie from Mingyu, a scowling Jihoon in the background, reminding him how sad it all is for him to be missing out on movie night now that he’s overseas again, they rented Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Soonyoungie, seriously.

He texts back _SOS!!_ to no avail—Mingyu’s guaranteed to lose his cellphone in the couch cushions. He needs logic, needs someone to blunt with him, anyway. He calls Jihoon, listens to the line ring. Nearly hangs up.

“What,” Jihoon says flatly.

“Jihoonie,” Soonyoung says, sweet. Mingyu crowing _is that Soonyoung-hyung?_ filters in from the background. “Do you believe in good luck?”

Jihoon pauses, the call woven with movie-watching white noise. “Sure.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it.”

Soonyoung smacks his own forehead, tries not to laugh. “Okay, then…do you believe in signs? Or, uhm, omens?”

“Are you drunk? Why are you always thinking such strange things?”

Soonyoung blanches. “It’s not strange, I’m just thinking!”

He can practically hear Jihoon scowl and squint. “Kwon Soonyoung, what are you up to?”

“Uh…”

“He’s confessiong, you idiot,” Mingyu says, wrestling with Jihoon for the phone.

“Who, to me?”

“No!” yelps Soonyoung. Mingyu laughs loudly, the sound flattening as it comes in through the speakers. “To Myungho and Junhui.”

“Ah,” says Jihoon. Soonyoung feels his face grow hot, meandering into the bathroom to run cool tap water over one of his hands like that will do the job for him, trying to will away his flush by giving it the evil eye through the mirror. “You should’ve just said that. I think you should do it, even if only to save me from listening to you cry about it for another year.”

“I’m scared I’ll—agh, forget it. Give the phone back to Mingyu, you’re not romantic enough for this!”

“Well,” says Jihoon, enjoying himself. “You know what they say. Everything happens for a reason.”

“I don’t want that,” Soonyoung says, fast. The bathroom door is cold against his back but his skin feels so hot, like it’s crawling with fire ants. “I don’t think everything happens for a reason. I can’t accept that.”

“Then what?

“I don’t know. Maybe things just happen, and we give them meaning.”

Jihoon sighs. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No.” Soonyoung hears the front door open, then close. Minghao’s watch, abandoned by the sink, ticks, like a lock clicking into place. “It’s not the same at all.”

“Hyung!” Mingyu hollers, his volume jarring—Soonyoung startles, wincing away from his phone. “You’re thinking too much. Go with your instincts! You have travel magic on your side!”

Jihoon bats Mingyu away with some squabbling, the sound of a fist hitting Mingyu’s solar plexus, the wisp of air leaving his lungs and mouth. “I mean, christ, Soonyoung. Take your own advice.”

“What...?” Soonyoung waits him out, listening to Minghao’s bell-like laughter, Junhui’s voice floating towards him, muffled through the door. He looks at his face in the brassy reflection in the handle, proportions blown out.

“You are so dense sometimes. If we’re the ones that gives things meaning, why wait for signs to tell you what to do?”

 

/

 

Junhui is kissing Minghao.

Well, maybe it’s the other way around—there’s no way for Soonyoung to tell, arriving this late in the game—Minghao’s fingers splayed wide across Junhui’s neck, curling around the back of his head, the curves of his face held softly between Junhui’s hands.

Soonyoung stands in the bathroom doorway, feeling his chest coil up hard and fast, the slap of loneliness like a palm hitting the surface of still water. It’s been so long since Soonyoung kissed either of them that he no longer knows if they want to, if he even can, the discomfort of looking in on a private moment surging through him.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung rasps, stepping back, eyes to the floor as Minghao’s head swivels around, startled, to face him.“I didn’t mean to—intrude—I should have called and said I was home—”

“Wait—” says Minghao, taking one step towards him. “Soonyoung—”

Soonyoung clutches the door handle, stuck. Minghao stares there across the room, Junhui behind him, like a massively heart wrenching eclipse.

The light softens in Minghao’s eyes. “Is that what you think you’re doing? Intruding?”

Soonyoung fumbles, stops, stutters to a halt. He's got the world's first case of living rigor mortis. “I—” he says. “It feels like it. It feels like that.”

In a year, he made himself a biography of longing; it steers him like magnetism, has torque. It’s love that closes the mouth, never calls the name.

“Soonyoung—” Junhui starts. He steps out from behind Minghao, throwing the solar system out of whack.

Soonyoung shakes his head. The words he’s swallowed—they all fall right through him. “When I left back then, I felt like I had screwed up your relationship.”

“You didn’t,” says Minghao. Another step. “You didn’t screw it up, you just changed it.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing?”

“No,” says Junhui, cobra coiling his arms around Minghao, coming up from behind. “It’s just not the same.”

Minghao twists away, squeamish as Junhui tries to kiss below his ear, breaking out of his hold. He crosses the room towards Soonyoung, offers up his hands, palm up. Soonyoung takes them, gets tugged back into Minghao’s arms, face buried in his shoulder, eyes stinging as he breathes in. “See?”

Soonyoung shakes his head, wiping his tears on Minghao's old, soft t-shirt. "You knew and you let me run around here like an idiot?" He sniffles, eyeing Junhui over the slope of Minghao's shoulder like the creature from the black lagoon. "Jerks."

Junhui smiles wide at him. 

Minghao pats Soonyoung's back. "I didn't know. How could I know? You were acting weird as hell."

“It's 'cause I love you guys,” Soonyoung says, voice stifled, the sound warbled as it reaches his ears. Junhui wraps his arms around the both of them, squeezes so hard Soonyoung gets lifted up to his toes. “I love you so much.”

“Don’t cry,” Minghao says gently. “It’s gross and you have a lot of snot.”

Soonyoung barks out a laugh and punches Minghao with a tight fist against his back. It doesn’t phase him at all; he just laughs harder, pulls Soonyoung’s face away from his neck, wiping the wetness from his puffy under eyes. Junhui rubs Soonyoung’s back in one wide circle.

“Mean,” Soonyoung croaks. "This place gives me fucking allergies."

Junhui elbows Minghao out of the way and onto the bed, cradles Soonyoung against him like a newborn baby, shifting their weight from foot to foot in a silent slow dance. “He’s the worst,” Junhui says, mischievous.

“He’s not,” Soonyoung defends, sniffly. “He grew up really well. It sucks.”

Junhui lifts him up, lays him down in the middle of the bedsheets, flopping down next to him. Soonyoung presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, lets the blackness bloom yellow and blue, making sure this is real as Junhui traces invisible patterns on his arm in the silence.

“I really missed you guys,” Soonyoung whispers, finally. Minghao rolls over, rolls on top of him. His weight is solid and grounding, and he smells of flowery shampoo, fresh and sharp in the nose. He presses his face into Soonyoung’s clavicle, breathes him in, exhales damp and hot into the column of Soonyoung throat. Says, _me too_. Junhui sits up to stare down at him, smooths down the agitated hairs at the back of Minghao’s head.

“I was sick with it,” Minghao says. “Like all my luck ran out. I made Junhui- _go_ help me rearrange the apartment so many times. I thought I could fung soui you away.”

“I only moved the couch,” Junhui says. nudges Minghao over a few inches, drops his weight atop Soonyoung, too. Somebody’s left the light on, yellow everywhere that it hits them. “He fung soui’d,” Junhui continues softly, grinning with his chin resting atop the slow curved rise and fall of Soonyoung’s chest, a hand screwing with his earring, the hoop small and silver. “I just missed you.”

 

/

 

“You can fix them?”

The man nods, moving his glasses back to the top of his head, turning the figurines around in the light. “It may take a few weeks,” he says. “These are very small fractures, and a few fragments are probably missing. I will not be able to make them perfect.”

“That’s okay,” Soonyoung says. “As long as they look better than this.”

The antique store smells of dark rosin, aged wood and dust. Minghao leads him through it idly as Junhui works out the specifics of their deal in Cantonese far beyond the reaches of even Soonyoung’s best vocabulary.

They’d taken Junhui’s car all the way to Kowloon, the Fuk Luk Sau statues heavy in his bag, and wedged themselves into a ambiguously legal parking space on the side of the road. Soonyoung paid the meter toll for way longer than they probably needed, just in case. Minghao picks up a floral yellow vase, looks down the opening of it, and puts it back down again. “You think this would look good in the living room?”

“I think somebody would break it,” Soonyoung replies. And then, “Where did you even find this place?”

“I started looking the first day you came here,” Minghao says, running his hand back through the shag of his hair. “I had to call so many places. It’s hard to find people who do this kind of repair.”

Junhui rounds the corner of a cluttered mass of furniture in the antique shop, stepping over a mirror. He holds out the card he’s been given; name, phone number, expected date of pick up, eight weeks out. Minghao’s watch ticks out of rhythm with a grandfather clock in the corner of the storefront, faithful timekeepers that they are.

“Since you’ll be gone by the time it’s finished,” Junhui says, folding the paper into his pocket, “I put it under my name.”

 

/

 

Down a sidestreet, Junhui kisses him, sticky and cherry flavored from a tube of Minghao’s stolen chapstick before jogging inside the grocery store, the car still running and humming beneath Soonyoung’s feet. Minghao leans forward over the console, face flashing red in blue in the light of the convenience store’s neon _OPEN_ sign, watching pedestrians go buy.

“We probably should have gone with him,” he says eventually.

Soonyoung turns, finds Minghao’s face closer than ever. “Why?”

“Snacks,” Minghao sighs, putting an elbow up by Junhui’s headrest. “He seriously can’t resist them.”

“ _I’m_ not gonna be help in that category.”

“I guess not. Maybe you could refine his choices a little bit. He’s got a major sweet and sour tooth.”

Junhui ducks back into the car, shaking the frame of it as he pulls his legs in and closes the door. “I went as fast as I could,” he says, dropping the plastic bag into Soonyoung’s lap and pulling the gear shift back into _drive._ The plastic is cold when it hits the skin of Soonyoung’s thigh, and he yelps, letting it fall between his knees. Minghao peers down at it over his shoulder.

“Are those gummy worms?”

Junhui grins sheepishly, glancing back at him at a pause in the traffic. “Yeah,” he says. “Sour ones!”

Soonyoung searches through the bag further, shoving aside the lube, pulling out three cans of root beer and a single pint of vanilla ice cream. “Root beer floats?”

“I thought they sounded nice,” Junhui says earnestly. “Sweet _and_ cold. Even if he won’t admit it, Minghao secretly likes them after—”

Minghao flicks his ear. “ _Don’t,_ ” he says. Soonyoung pries open the bag of gummy worms.

“What?” complains Junhui, glancing at Minghao in the smudgy rearview mirror. “I think it’s very cute of you.”

Minghao scowls, sitting back in his seat, crossing his arms. “I’m not cute.”

Soonyoung twists around, cooing. “Our cutie Minghao,” he teases, dangling a gummy worm in front of him.

Minghao eyes him, face flat. Soonyoung wiggles his eyebrows, smiles wider, deeper. Minghao opens his mouth, eyes rolling so hard he might be busting an optic nerve, leans forward and takes the gummy with his teeth. “See,” says Soonyoung, facing the road again. The windshield starts spotting with raindrops. “Reversal charms.”

 

/

 

Minghao walks Soonyoung towards the bedroom, mouth hot against the back of his neck with his hands slipping up the front of his t-shirt, nails scratching lightly along his stomach. Soonyoung shivers. Minghao presses the full line of his body against him, nudges him another step forward.

Distracted, Soonyoung turns his head to watch Junhui put everything away into sections of the refrigerator before they pass through the bedroom door, and Minghao bites his ear, pulling a hoop between his teeth. A hand travels lower, palming him through the front of his jeans. Soonyoung hums as Minghao grabs his hips and turns him around, slotting their mouths together.

The way Minghao kisses is demanding; hints of tongue and teeth, overwhelming as he presses Soonyoung back, back, back, until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed with a soft thud. As he falls back onto the mattress, Minghao levels his stare, pulling his sweatshirt up over his head, torso bare save for the silver necklace hanging down from his neck, the pendant of which Soonyoung can’t see clearly in the low light. He swallows. Minghao smiles.

“Junhui,” Soonyoung calls timidly, stalling, looking past Minghao as he makes his way towards the bedroom. Junhui pats Minghao’s ass and strides towards the bed, tossing the lube towards the headboard and falling into the blankets alongside Soonyoung.

Soonyoung clambers onto Junhui’s lap, fingers curling around his shoulders, thumbs against the tendons in his neck. Eye to eye, Junhui noses forward to kiss him; the corner of his mouth, cheek, nose, chin, turning his face this way and that between the palms of his hands. Soonyoung pulls Junhui’s hair, tilting his head back, and kisses him on the mouth. His hips roll.

Minghao crawls up the bed behind him, lifting up the hem of Soonyoung’s shirt, fingers grazing his sides as Soonyoung lifts his arms, breaking the kiss to oblige the removal. He rests his chin atop Soonyoung’s bare shoulder, and Junhui sidetracks to kiss him, too, open mouthed and hot as Soonyoung squirms in Junhui’s lap, cock filling up as it presses against Junhui’s stomach through his jeans. Minghao hears him whine, pulls back.

“Needy,” he says. “I remember that.”

Soonyoung flushes, splotchy like he’s taken a volcanically hot shower. “I’ve just been—” _thinking of this for months now._

Soonyoung remembers what it felt like, an entire year ago, spring; the lamb laid before them in the slaughterhouse, how it made him sweat, the squeeze two times tighter in a dorm regulation twin bed. Minghao’s neon string lights turned the immediate universe red, purple, green. Soonyoung remembers the ache in the empty, the slow burn, the kind of fucking that made even missionary feel like black magic.

“I’m not _needy._ ”

“You are,” pokes Minghao. He rises up on his knees, slides his hand up Soonyoung chest to his throat, his windpipe. He tilts Soonyoung’s head back, baring his throat. When Minghao looks down at him, the reflections darken in his eyes. Soonyoung holds his gaze, upside down. “It’s something that I like.”

Junhui leans forward to mouth at Soonyoung’s neck, nipping and biting as Minghao releases his chin from his grip.

“Off,” orders Soonyoung, breathy, tugging on Junhui’s shirt. He can’t keep focused, eyes roaming over acres of skin, working at the buckle of Junhui’s belt. Soonyoung doesn’t even pull it out from the loops, just pops the button of Junhui’s jeans, tugs the zipper down. Minghao reaches around and does the same to Soonyoung himself.

“Lay down,” instructs Minghao, and down Junhui goes, back flat against the bed, ribcage curving around his diaphragm like a sculpture. Soonyoung’s knees slide further apart over him, ass settling on Junhui’s pelvis as he reaches into Soonyoung’s underwear and starts jerking him off, the friction a little dry but enough to get by on. His spine curves, curling in on himself, helplessly turned on.

Minghao pushes Soonyoung forward with a hand between his shoulder blades until he’s on his elbows and knees over Junhui, staring down at him, thighs interlocked. Junhui grinds up against him, face pink, grabbing a handful of Soonyoung's ass. Minghao's hands hook into the crease where Soonyoung’s thighs meet his hips, dragging him back, then up, ass in the air, cock aching from the loss of contact. 

Minghao pulls the elastic band of Soonyoung’s underwear down, taking his jeans along with it and tossing it all to the floor. He grab's Soonyoung's hips, lets him feel how hard he is. Junhui arches up to kiss Soonyoung, occupying his time, hands roaming over his back while Minghao reaches to grab the lube from the bedsheets. The cap pops.

“One or two?”

Junhui answers for him. “Two,” he says, grinning devilishly. Soonyoung likes the stretch.

Junhui watches Soonyoung’s face as Minghao spreads lube across his fingers and pushes them in, the wet sound it makes obscene, embarrassing. Soonyoung kisses Junhui, gasping and groaning, just so he’ll have to close his eyes, stop staring at him so closely.

“Good?” Minghao says, grinding his fingers in slowly. He leans over, planting a kiss on Soonyoung’s back. Soonyoung nods, fast, rocking his hips back to meet him.

Minghao is relentless from there. He drags his fingers out to the tips and plunges them back in, pace building up. Soonyoung slides his hand down Junhui’s stomach and work a hand into his boxers, giving him something to grind against. Soonyoung swipes his thumb through the precome beading at the tip of Junhui's cock, his rhythm disjointed and faltering as Minghao works in a third finger. Soonyoung feels like frostbite, sunburn, too hot, too cold. Minghao is sexy as hell, his necklace tickling Soonyoung's back as he leans over him, Soonyoung's lip caught between Junhui's teeth like candy floss, barely kissing, breathing in dangerous proximity.

“Fuck,” Soonyoung says, all exhalation. Minghao presses his thumb against his perineum, leans in to lick up the seam of his balls. “Fuck—oh my god—”

Minghao’s fingers catch on his rim at the knuckle, squelching obscenely as Soonyoung flushes and presses his face against Junhui’s throat. He body shakes with the effort of holding himself up, cock untouched and aching. Junhui strokes his hair as Minghao pulls his fingers out, spreads him apart, blows cool air against his rim to watch it clench, sending a shock through the nerves in Soonyoung’s body.

“Fuck,” Soonyoung wheezes, forehead at Junhui’s shoulder. “Don’t _do_ that— _fuck—”_

“Let me see you,” Junhui says, voice low and sweet—when Soonyoung puts a palm against his ribcage to try and lift himself, he can feel exactly where it comes from, like bass out from a speaker. His smile is teasing, petulant as Soonyoung’s body gives up on him, not even focused enough to jerk him off. 

Minghao leans forwards and presses his lips to Sooyoung's rim, tongue slipping into him, fucked open. Soonyoung makes a sound, high and caught in his throat, pressing back against Minghao’s mouth. It’s not enough—not even close—Soonyoung’s pretty sure as soon as someone gets their dick in him, he’s going to fucking come. Junhui bites his shoulder, lightly, and Soonyoung wants to shrivel up and die from how bad he wants it, hide his face, close his eyes. Instead he just stares into the pool bottom black of Junhui's irises, feels his whole body pulse, pulse, pulse.

Soonyoung rolls onto his back, hands twisting into the sheets beside him, thighs falling open. He doesn’t care who fucks him, just needs it before he comes with nothing inside him, unsatisfying.

Soonyoung feels his heart twisting up and wringing out, watching Minghao settle between his legs, the blunt head of his cock sinking in, torturously slow. Junhui watches intently, palming himself, lashes cast low. Soonyoung needs it closer, harder, like it’s suffocating, winding his fingers into Minghao’s hair where its shortest and softest, the burning nape of his neck. Soonyoung pulls him down, levels Junhui’s gaze as his back bows up off the mattress, as Minghao bottoms out.

Minghao licks from Soonyoung’s jaw to his cheek, territorial. “Open up,” he says, hand splayed against the side of Soonyoung’s face, thumb pulling his lip back. His stroke is brutal, has Soonyoung squirming. When all Soonyoung can do is groan and whine, Minghao repeats himself. _Open up._

Minghao’s fingers settle atop the lines of Soonyoung’s molars, press down on his tongue like paperweight. Minghao stops thrusting, instead just grinds into him, slow. Soonyoung tightens up, whining, orgasm washing over him like an animal finally dying of it’s goddamn hunger.

Soonyoung shakes, twitches, reaches blindly for Junhui, nails digging into the bone of his kneecap. Minghao hooks his fingers behind Soonyoung’s bottom teeth. 

Bite the hands that have starved you. Soonyoung makes hazy eye contact with Junhui, adjusts the angle of his hips, and closes his mouth.

 

/

 

Soonyoung’s got one more night in Hong Kong before he needs to be back in the airport, crawling forwards one hour through time. He drags Junhui and Minghao through the streets towards the water, onto a ferry, up towards the very top floor. The sky, blotted out by the hazy glow of Hong Kong, opens up black and blue above him like a bruise.

Tonight, Soonyoung’s going to do the kind of dancing that has him sweating it out, a fever that just won’t break, the kind of exertion that has drinking ice water tasting of snow. He’ll be eating the atmosphere.

In the middle of the water, the air smells of Hong Kong’s hot dust, the oncoming slow summer rain—he holds it all close, the distance thin as silk, close enough to get soaked, to be burned.

Atop the ferry, Junhui holds onto the railing, closing his eyes against the breeze, blue and yellow in the ever changing light, the dimming shadows, shifting on the water. Minghao stands next to him, back to the sea as the ferry radio crackles and starts sending out metallic, ringing feedback. Soonyoung feels like the luckiest person in the world.

Junhui looks over his shoulder. “Come here,” he says, and his voice is all invitation, warm, open, smile widening.

Soonyoung shakes his head, nails pressing crescent moons into his palm, into his love line. He itches in a way he can’t figure out how to scratch.

Minghao says something softly to Junhui, the sound of it indiscernible, and turns around to face the water, leaning far out over the railing. Soonyoung’s gaze is steady. The radio finally catches a satellite signal again, crackling music buzzing out. Minghao’s weight shifts, jostling Junhui, and Soonyoung's heart seizes up. Tightens. Don't move, he thinks. Stay like that. I want that.

Junhui gives him a funny look, but lets it slide, his arm curving around Minghao’s narrow shoulders, squeezing him a little. Soonyoung settles in his rickety seat.

He thinks of the ferry ticket in his pocket, all kinds of star-crossed numbers printed out just for him; four fours in a row, a number that ends in two-fifty.

Fortune, fate—even his astronomically shitty luck—it’s a cherry seed Soonyoung chews up, spits out.

 

Besides. The heart is a fruit you pit. Score. 

Eat whole.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the mods whom i love very much for organizing this . . . i had fun even though i complained a lot :}
> 
> you can come find me on twitter @ hoshiologyphd or @ hochitown if you like (its on private but im not picky abt who i let follow hehe) otherwise feel free 2 curse at me in the comments, send me ccs etc
> 
> THANKS FOR READING!!!!! BYE!!!!!


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